(a middle-aged woman was lugging a full burlap sack labeled 豆粕 in front of me up the escalator -- asked my boyfriend how to read it since I hadn't seen it before -- according to him, it makes for good pig fodder)

Boyfriend likened 粕 to 渣 zhā, which is "lees, dregs, sediment"

Since then, I've returned home, dived into the dictionary, and yep, that's what's going on. Of course, peregrinations in the dictionary often bear other fruit, so I stumbled upon:

糟粕 zāopò - waste matter, dross, dregs

with the fun 糟 of 乱七八糟 luàn qī bā zāo - in a wild mess; and 糟糕 zāogāo - what a mess

Me and a friend (who is also learning Chinese) were guessing what "Selfie" might mean in Chinese and I guessed it right, although I may not know more than 500 words in Chinese! It amazes me how straightforward Chinese sometimes is in the creation of new words. 自= self, 拍照 = photograph.

(At least that's what Pleco says, hope it is also correct)

Wipe the glass. This is the usual way to start, even in the days, day and night, only a happy one.

Not new words, though I think I learned 逸 only two years ago. But why Sun Yat-sen is Sun Yat-sen in English is new to me. 孙中山, as he's usually known, has an "art name" of 孙逸仙, which in Minnan dialect, would be, like Sun Yat-sen. This may be common knowledge to you younger students of Chinese out there, but I never knew!

I marvel that I didn't discover this far earlier in my China experience, but besser spät als nie.

And speaking of German ... "abtasten", meaning "probe, feel", I believe in the context of a prostate exam in the movie I was watching. And "erobern", "conquer", which is just a cool word.

English: finale /fɨˈnæli/
English stress is so crazy. How are people supposed to know where the stress is? Is that French -é? If so, why not have ultimate stress? Is it English -e? If so, why pronounce them at all? Seems it's from Italian